Jackson Farming Co

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A North Carolina grower stays competitive by focusing on the latest technology. By Rosemary O. Gordon Managing Editor Sometimes it is simply your calling in life to farm. Just ask Brent Jackson, owner of Jackson Farming Company (JFC) in Autryville, NC. He didn’t come from a farming family but rather took to working the land as a child. Although his grandfather had farmed, his parents weren’t growers and actually encouraged him to do something else with his life. Instead, Jackson was bitten by the “ag bug” and worked for a few area growers during summer breaks and after school. “I really loved my jobs,” he says. “I worked in the fields harvesting tobacco, and then finally worked my way up to driving tractors and tilling the soil, and the running the cotton picker,” he says. When he graduated, the plan was for him to attend college and become an attorney. At least this what his parents wanted for he, he says. “I tried [college] for part of the following year and I realized that I was addicted to farming, and I was determined to give it a try.” So despite obstacles such as having no land, equipment, or money, and little support from friends and family, Jackson put it all on the line. In 1978 he teamed up with one of the growers he had worked with in the past, got married, and he and his wife Debbie decided to give farming a try. There were times in the late ‘70s and the early ‘80s, however, that Jackson admits that maybe his friends and relatives knew what they were talking about when they told him he’d never make it as a grower. He and Debbie started raising row crops and did not meet with much success.

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